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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 59)

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Isobel Baillie; a red cord out of place; an amusing wedding; a new duck and Jane is “stepping out”.

On February 17th 1954 Gran is suffering from a bad cold but manages to attend a concert in Eastleigh with her friend Mary Harding:

I had taken Disprin and dosed myself with glucose and, mercifully, my head was better.  The Star performer was Isobel Baillie, the famous soprano, supported by our local tenor, Stanley Wheatley, and Edward Trigg played the violin.  Isobel Baillie was accompanied by Wainwright Morgan, and Edward Trigg by his daughter Margaret.  It was a delightful and varied programme, given in aid of the organ fund.

Gran writes enthusiastically of the soprano, saying:

I had heard her frequently on the wireless and admired her tremendously but tonight the purity and clarity of her voice and diction were a joy to hear.  An added joy was the knowledge that so vast a company of so many types of persons all loved music, and, in a cursory glance when taking our places, I saw a school-mistress, postman, painter and decorator, music-teacher, and farm-worker amid countless folk from all walks of life and, during the performance everyone was mute and still, in rapt attention.  Involuntary coughs were stifled with commendable determination (I ate more Zubes than I have ever done before!).

Jane has been home for half term at this time, Gran recording that they spent the afternoon of the 22nd:

…busy with a few alterations and adjustments for Jane before she returned to College.  How quickly her half-term break has sped away…I shall (D.V.) see her again on Friday when I join her at Victoria, en route for Ramsgate for Deidre’s wedding on Saturday”.

The “alterations and adjustments” were, I assume, in relation to Jane’s role as bridesmaid at the forthcoming event.

There is a nice insight into Gran’s aesthetic sense in a description she gives of a boxed flower display she prepares, either for the Edinburgh Castle or the Queen Elizabeth on February 25th:

It contained Spanish Iris, pink Tulips, deep pink, pale pink and magenta Carnations, and mauve and deep pink Freesias.  When I came to put in the card, written and sent with the order, I found that it had a bright red cord in the corner. Mercifully it did not have to be tied on so I was able to remove the cord, for just that dash of so wrong a colour would have ruined the whole effect.  Jill, seeing what I did, remarked, “It is a pity those who receive your boxes cannot see how much trouble you take with them”, but I pointed out that such does not matter much, so long as my aesthetic sense this end is not offended. That red cord would have entirely spoilt my memory of this beautiful box.

Joan Adelaide Goater - her journal about Chandler's Ford.

February 26th is a busy day for Gran, involving complex travel arrangements, which get her to Ramsgate with Jane by the evening, in preparation for the wedding on the 27th.  The wedding and its associated events are so bizarre in relation to more usual events in Gran’s life, that I include almost all she writes about it:

We were met at Ramsgate by my young cousin, Brian [one of the bride’s two brothers], and a friend, one Robin, by name, whose surname I never discovered.  I did not recognise Brian, not having seen him since he was about nineteen, some ten years ago. We were then introduced to Robin, who was the possessor of “Augustus”, the somewhat vintage but high-powered car, which was to take us to the harbour, where the yacht “Terminist” was moored.  Here the Bride’s parents live during the Winter when the yacht is not chartered as it is in the Summer, and I think it must have been the unusual event of a wedding from a ship which caused the subsequent interest and excitement which turned the planned quiet family wedding into the popular, public ceremony which got right out of our control and left us in a dazed and bewildered state.

Ramsgate Harbour – about 50 years befor Deidre’s wedding.  Image courtesy of Michael Jefferies via Flickr.

How this came about is still uncertain.  We reached the harbour after passing through narrow streets in the town which reminded me of Winchester, and, after safely negotiating a narrow plank gangway and almost perpendicular steps with rope “banister”, we were on board “Terminist”.  Another flight of steep steps, along an alleyway and we entered the smoke-filled saloon, to be welcomed with open arms by a bevy of cousins whom I had not seen for several years, friends of long-standing, and a host of youthful student friends of bride and bridegroom, whose arrival from London, where both were working, was eagerly awaited.

After an affectionate greeting from cousins and cousins-by-marriage, Ivan and Jill, Marjorie and Jimmy [parents of the bride], Fairlie and Brian, we were introduced to a crowd of youngsters…Bill, best man, Pauline, Robin again, Jill Hambledon, a friend of days in India, and “Auntie Johnny” who was Deidre’s nanny in her baby days.  The clergyman who was to perform the Ceremony the Rev. Leech and his wife also called in with a message from Deidre and Tim [the bridegroom], saying they would be rather later than expected.  This proved to be close on midnight and poor Timothy seemed utterly bewildered by all the crowd, but now only dimly seen through the thickening fog of tobacco smoke.

A newspaperman had somehow discovered that the wedding was to take place tomorrow from the yacht and he had sought out Deidre at her flat in Southfields and insisted on taking her photograph, seated at a table looking at a picture painted by herself.  This, together with an account of the “Terminist’s” activities and mention of the fact that a bridal wreath was to be hoisted from the mainsail tomorrow morning was published in Thursday’s “Evening News”. Now Deidre and Tim learned that a representative of the B.B.C. had been to the yacht to obtain permission to film their departure for the church and eventually Tim was taken away, somewhat dazed, to be cared for by the best man in order to be presented in a fit state for tomorrow’s ceremony.

February 27th:

It was after one o’clock this morning when we at last retired.  I shared a cabin with my cousins, Fairlie and Marjorie, they sleeping in a double bunk and I in a single one above them.  It was quite comfortable and, as it was a quiet night and the sea calm, there was little perceptible movement of the ship and I prepared for a good remainder of the night.  But here I was much mistaken!  I had scarcely dropped off when I was roused, not only be the greatly increased heaving of the ship by the swell of the water, but by the most outrageous groanings and creakings of the mooring ropes accompanied by the thumping caused by the movement of the trestles supporting the ladder down from the gangway.  In addition to this Marjorie was snoring with joyous abandon!

At length, Gran gets some sleep, awakening a few hours later to find much movement on board as early risers clear up the debris of the night before, and prepare themselves for the coming day.  She, herself, is unable to escape from her top bunk to lend a hand, for fear of treading on the still slumbering cousins and because her position was so close to the floor of the upper deck , she says, “that I could not sit upright to commence operations”.  She continues:

Jimmy kept rushing in to show us the flowers, which had just arrived.  Jane’s Victorian Posy was composed of blue and white Hyacinth pips and pink and white Cyclamen, with sprigs of Asparagus Fern and surrounded by a silver frill.  As Deidre was carrying a white Prayer Book, she had no bouquet, but a silver ribbon book-marker bore three red rosebuds and Lilies-of-the-Valley on the long end hanging down.

…the television cameramen were coming at ten o’clock for the purpose of fixing up their cameras…various people arrived – it seemed as though all the young male guests were over six feet tall…

There is Deidre, long before her wedding day, with her two brothers, Brian and Andy, and Barry is on the left.

And as another exceptionally tall BBC Newsreel man proceeds to make his own arrangements, Jimmy, the father of the bride says, ”Well, it doesn’t appear to be our wedding any more.  You’d better do it as you wish, but we must be ready to leave for the church by eleven-fifteen”.  Next came “another large figure”, Gran recounts:

“Good-morning, I am from the Daily Sketch.  May I please have a picture of the bride?  I think perhaps, gazing into her mirror, putting finishing touches!”  Deidre protested, “But I am finished”, and nobody seemed to know where to find a suitable mirror.  But the cameraman was quite undaunted and, with a bright smile, produced a silver-backed mirror from the capacious pocket of his overcoat!  Jane was not yet ready but he insisted on the bridesmaid holding the mirror for the bride, “a lovely picture don’t you think?” – and Jane, much alarmed, was hurriedly prepared.

Filming for the BBC followed and then Gran and others, making their way off the boat to the harbour wall met the Mayor of Ramsgate, “in chain of office” just arriving to interview the bride!  And at the top of the gangway, they encounter not only a battery of cameras, but “a good section of the local population waiting for the bride to appear”.  “How this all came about”. She writes, “was a mystery”, and she continues:

Unfortunately we could not wait to see Deidre appear since we had to reach Holy Trinity Church before her.  Arrived at the main gate, I was amazed to see Robin wearing a deer-stalker hat, the first I have ever seen in real life, but I later discovered that this very unusual young man sported other not-often-seen accessories.

The wedding is described in some detail, typical of Gran, including that the bride:

…wore the pearl girdle which had belonged to the court gown of one of the ancestors of her maternal great grandfather, who, incidentally, is, or was, Jane’s great grandfather also, since my Mother’s sister married my Father’s brother. And Deidre’s mother is the daughter of this union. Jane, the only bridesmaid, followed, her gown of deep blue velvet and small Juliet cap suiting her to perfection. As she walked, the lights in the folds of her gown were exactly matched by the blue Hyacinths in her posy, and she carried herself beautifully.  The Service, Nuptial Mass, was impressive and very well conducted but I still much prefer the simple dignity of our own Church.

Deidre and Tim returned to the yacht before going to the reception, to oblige the newsreel men, who wanted to complete their sequence of pictures with Deidre’s return as Mrs Timothy John Chapman.  It was an enjoyable reception…

And Gran relates the more entertaining parts of the toasts and speeches, though she appears to be more amused and interested by some of the men present, including an apparent Frenchman, addressed as Jean-Pierre, “a slight, dark young man…who, if he was indeed a Frenchman, spoke the most perfect Oxford English with no trace of an accent”, and:

Now too, I noticed other remarkable items in Robin’s attire and accoutrements, though he was an extremely natural and un-self-conscious young man.  Beneath his inconspicuous grey-green suit he was wearing a beautifully embroidered pale yellow waistcoat and smoked only black cigarettes, which looked quite extraordinary after the usual white ones.  When [Jill Hambledon] asked him what he was doing now, he smiled and said, “Oh, I am one of the Lilies of the Field”, but Deidre told us later that he was hoping to start a Bookshop at Horsham, where he lives.

These were not the run-of-the-mill types with which Gran usually mixed and I wonder more and more about those cousins with whom she holidayed in North Wales as a child, and their subsequent lifestyles!

This link gives details of the last years of Terminist, which according to family memory, was lived on by Gran’s cousin Marjorie and her husband Jimmy Rae, who offered Summer day trips in the English Channel at this time.

Gran returns to more familiar subjects in her notes of the rest of the day, including that, using a pair of powerful binoculars of Jimmy’s, from the boat, before leaving for the wedding, she believes that she identified three Slavonian Grebes and two “Scaup ducks”, both species new to her.  She writes that she had had a “wonderful day”, which ends, I suspect perfectly for her, as she spends the night in the fire-lit comfort of Adrian’s mother’s house in Kingston.

A female Scaup. Gran saw two of these marine ducks, but no drakes – which are much smarter. Image by Ingrid Taylor via Flickr.

Day-to-day nature notes, as ever, form the bulk of Gran’s writing each day – birds’ nest-building activities, first flowering dates of wild flowers, birds in and flying over the garden; the continued presence of Crossbills around Chandler’s Ford.  She describes a Blackbird’s domestic activities in typical fashion on 9th March thus:

A hen blackbird has been busily building a nest in a Cypress tree close to the fence, though the tree is actually next door. But I was able to watch operations from the kitchen window and she has worked assiduously all day, collecting materials in our garden.  Untidy ends of Iris leaves were ledft hanging out of the tree, betraying the nest to all, and I saw the bird also carrying the large brown leaves that had fallen from the Japanese Oak tree next door, and collecting twigs of birch, tugging impatiently at those which were too long and eventually leaving them.  Once, the cock flew at her as she stood on the fence before approaching the nest with a beakful of material and there was a great commotion with him chasing her with much loud “chipping”.

That colourful fellow, Robin, first met at Deidre’s wedding, apparently has designs on Jane, who appears to have turned a few male heads in recent times.  Gran is amused by a letter received from her on the 9th:

…in which she said that Robin (whose surname is Eastwood) had taken her out in his car last Saturday and had asked her to go out for the day with him next Sunday, and Christoper Jemmet, whom she met at a College Dance some weeks ago, and who took her to meet his mother the day after Deidre’s wedding, had wanted to take her to the theatre last Saturday, but Robin had forestalled him!!  Now he wants to take her to a dance next Saturday.  My little Jane is stepping out is she not?

That afternoon:

…I went as usual to have tea with Mary, and today’s invitation included my Mother.  To Mary’s consternation I walked in the back door as usual, bringing mother with me, whereas I ought to have knocked on the front door and been admitted in style!  I never was one for ceremony with my friends and I have a great affection for “back-door” houses where I know I can always walk in.

And she ends her entry for that day with:

I picked another Iris stylosa today and hope to have another tomorrow.  It will be Mary’s birthday and I want to do a bowl for her.

 

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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 67) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 70) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 76) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 121) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 131)
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